Margaret Derrig

Dr. Ketal Patel

ArtEduc 4900: Practicum Clinical and Seminar

25 April 2022

4900 Final Reflection

The past 14 weeks of student teaching have taught me a lot about myself as an art educator that I

will bring with me into my own classroom. The two biggest things I have grown with and now feel more

prepared for in my own teaching career are how I can develop units that are appropriate, well paced, and

engaging, and my ability to pivot, adapt, and adjust my lessons as needed. I found for both sites that these

two things work hand in hand. At my primary site, I see evidence of these in my kindergarten/first grade

lessons I taught. I developed a unit for my students that I thought was age appropriate and engaging,

which allowed them to develop their technical skills and understanding of the foundational concepts: they

learned about the primary and secondary colors through three lessons that built off each other and were

inspired by the book we read at the start of the unit. After I taught each lesson for the first time, I reflected

on how it went and thought about the things I could do differently for the next class. My cooperating

teacher also gave me a lot of feedback and suggestions for things that I could try in order to improve my

lessons. I taught this unit to six different classes, which were made up of very different energies,

behaviors, and types of learners. This gave me a great opportunity to try different teaching styles and

adapt my instructions as needed in order to accommodate the unique tiny-humans I taught in each class.

At my secondary site, my Photo 1 classes are a good example of how I am prepared for these

things as well. For their unit, my ability to adapt my lessons based on how my students were responding

to it is what helped me make it more realistic and beneficial for them. Right from the start I had to make

changes to my plans because I forgot Daylight Savings would affect my 1st period class. But as the

students worked on the project, I observed their progress and reevaluated my plans. I decided to cut down

on the content of the unit but extended the timeline. This gave my students more time to focus on the

important parts and what they were most engaged with. I think that giving them more time and a more
specific focus helped them improve their technical and creative skills. By the 5th week, when they started

evaluating their work before submitting their final images, many students voiced their surprise at how

“bad” their beginning photos were compared to their most recent ones. I jokingly responded, “believe it or

not, you’ve gotten better at taking pictures since that’s all you’ve done the past 5 weeks,” but also

expressed to them that I was impressed by how much they grew throughout the project. That was when I

felt most confident that I made the right decision in letting them focus on the three exercises instead of

five and extending the time since they were enjoying it so much.

Two of the biggest challenges I’ve had during student teaching are with things that I think will

become easier once I have my own classroom and further develop my teaching style. The first challenge

is with my planning, since I tend to be a “big picture” thinker I sometimes struggle with some of the

smaller details of the lessons. Reflecting on this after I completed my student teaching, I think that being

able to develop and implement my own classroom management systems and practices for my classes will

help me with this. Being a guest in another teacher’s room, and taking over their classes in the middle of

the year for a short period of time, made it harder to develop and implement my own systems. However,

both of my cooperating teachers taught me a lot about their own classroom management, and I know I

will be borrowing a lot of ideas from them. Things like color coding supplies with tables and students

having numbered seats are simple yet effective systems that will help build the foundation of the other

practices and systems I want to implement. Developing my classroom management more will help with a

lot of the smaller details of my lessons that I forgot sometimes.

Another challenge I experienced at both sites was with being able to get and maintain my

students’ attention at times. I think this will become easier as I further discover and develop my personal

teaching style. In my own classroom, once I start to get to know my students, I’ll be able to try out

different things, like call & response or little games that can bring their attention back to whatever we’re

doing. I also need to get more comfortable with waiting, however long it might be, until all the kids listen

and pay attention. I think during student teaching, I was so concerned with taking advantage of the short

time I had that waiting felt like I was wasting it. Once I am teaching my own classes, I want to shift my
attitude so it is clear that the students are wasting their own time. I know that students respond well to

this, and that they will start to hold each other accountable, too. I didn’t feel very comfortable with this

before, and I know I want to work on it more.

I wouldn’t say that student teaching has shifted my thinking, as much as it has given me more

experience and examples to support the ideas I have about the work of art educators and their role in

schools and communities. First, I believe that art classes should focus on the process and progress more

than the final product. It’s important, and it feels good, to make work that you’re proud of, but it might

take time to get here. Your growth along the way is what is most important – and I believe that

emphasizing this will help to set more realistic expectations and boost students’ confidence even more. I

also think that our goal as art educators isn't for our students to be the “best” artists and to create

“masterpieces”; It’s to teach our students valuable skills and concepts that will help them in other aspects

of life outside of art. What they take away from my class might have nothing to do with art and

that’s okay! We are simply using art as the medium by which we teach our students other important

lessons. If we’re lucky, they’ll also be able to create works they are proud of and become better artists.

A great example of this, which shows how the importance of art classes lies outside of the work

that the students make, is something that happened just yesterday. I closed out student teaching at my

secondary site yesterday with the Spring Arts Festival that the high school puts on. I had the amazing

opportunity to be a part of this and experience a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a big art

show like theirs. This event, and all the work I did leading up to it, was the most fulfilling experience

from my secondary placement. But out of all the wonderful parts about the day, one of the best was

getting to talk to the mom of one of the students I’ve gotten to know over the past seven weeks. Hannah is

a junior in the advanced ceramic class and sits at the chatty table of talented, hard-working girls that I

loved ending my day with. Her work has always really impressed me; her technical skills and love for the

medium are very obvious just by looking at her work. She’d often be in the ceramic room working during

other periods of the day, too, so I got used to her witty sarcasm and artistic spirit, which fit right in with

the other students and teachers. At the art show, Hannah was one of the students who volunteered to
throw on the wheel for the ceramic demo station, which had quite an audience during the whole event.

While watching them at one point, I started talking to the woman standing next to Hannah watching her,

who introduced herself as Hannah’s mom. We talked about Hannah’s work and you could tell how proud

she was of her daughter. I told her how much I’ve loved getting to know Hannah and how much fun it is

having her in class. She got teary-eyed as she started to tell me how much the ceramics classes have

helped her find herself; that Hannah was really shy before, and struggled a lot, but since finding her love

for ceramics, she has become a whole new person. The last time they got to go to an event for her was in

5th grade. And now here she was, not only showing her art in the show, but also doing demos for almost

four hours for all the people who stopped to watch. Her whole family could see how much ceramics

meant to her and were so supportive of her, even staying after the show to help clean up. Hannah is the

exemplar for what art classes can do for someone, completely unrelated to the art itself.

The most fulfilling part of my primary site was the students themselves. I got to work with such

diverse populations from two different schools and they all made me a better teacher. My background and

love for American Sign Language helped me connect with the Deaf students at Huy, which I could tell

meant a lot to both of us. The students drew pictures for me, complimented my outfits, and were always

so excited to tell me the most random things: which I think is how kids show that they like you. Their

disappointed “noooo!”s when I told them I would be leaving was the best and worst part. Knowing they

loved being my students as much as I loved being their teacher was the best compliment I could get from

them. I enjoyed my time at all three schools so much over the past 14 weeks. It makes me feel so excited

and hopeful for what I will do for my own classes one day.